Grey Sister Read online

  “You won’t hunt for me again.”

  The child-taker made no reply, only watched her as the blood dripped from a cut across the tip of his nose. Nona bent and scooped up one of the sections of bar, a wooden disk, narrower than her finger and about two inches across. She took the child-taker’s purse from her pocket and put the disk in as if it were an oversized coin.

  “Yours.” She tossed the purse into the cage.

  With that she walked away.

  You’re just leaving him?

  Yes.

  He would have sold you! Again!

  Yes.

  You’re insane!

  Maybe. Nona shrugged. I do hear voices in my head.

  23

  ABBESS GLASS

  “THE GIRL’S SAFE?” Even in the study of her own house Glass would no longer name her. They called the rank below inquisitor “watchers,” but in truth they were more often listeners, and they were good at it.

  “Safe’s too strong a word for it,” Sister Apple said. “But she’s gone. My friend assures me that the girl left the Rock in one piece.” Behind Sister Apple Sister Tallow said nothing but her shoulders relaxed a fraction. To Glass the fraction spoke volumes.

  Glass nodded. Kettle would report to Apple from now on, and Apple would bring word to the big house. Nona would have the sense to run, though her instincts would tell her to fight. Kettle would have made sure the girl ran. Of course, she would run back to whatever collection of muddy sticks the child-taker had purchased her from. You didn’t need to see much to see that. Even Pelter would guess as much. It would take the Inquisition a while to find the child-taker though—too long probably—and without him they’d never discover the village.

  Sister Tallow coughed, bringing Glass back to the moment. “Abbess, you need to take action. Brother Pelter won’t leave here until he’s brought you down. If he can’t find anything concrete he’ll make his case out of innuendo and gossip. It won’t matter.”

  “I am taking action, sister.” Glass stayed at her window. “I’m watching the watchers.” She smiled at the old joke. “I can see two of them from here. One is following Sister Chrysanthemum in the direction of the necessary. I fear he may be disappointed if he hopes for any secrets to be dropped.”

  “I mean action! The high priest—”

  “The high priest is struggling to hold on to the Church,” Glass said. “The ice is closing, the emperor feels it. In such times trust is squeezed out and we gather power to ourselves. It would take no great leap of imagination for Crucical to take Nevis’s mantle and declare himself high priest as well as emperor. Nevis would rather lose Sweet Mercy than lose it all. He’d lose a dozen convents and monasteries and count himself ahead.”

  “Direct action then.” Sister Apple tucked a red coil into her headdress, thoughtful as if choosing the right weapon for the job. “Pelter’s just one man we could—”

  Glass shook her head. “We must have faith, Apple.”

  “I pray to the Ancestor at the four corners of every day.”

  “Faith in me.” A smile. Glass turned from her window and put a hand to Apple’s shoulder, deepening her voice theatrically. “Grey Sister, you may pass unseen and drop poison in a cup, but my intentions are hidden deeper than any shadow goes. I can place my venom in any ear where words may echo.” She reached for Tallow’s shoulder and brought both nuns to her side. “Red Sister, you might punch through a door but when my blows are struck no castle wall will stop them, no miles will keep you safe.” Glass spoke with a confidence she didn’t feel, but she needed them strong. In any game of bets and forfeit the bluff was always of more importance than whatever might be written on the cards held tight against your chest.

  “We have faith in you, abbess,” Tallow said. Tallow always had faith.

  “Be cautious though.” Apple still looked worried. “Spend too long watching the long game and the short game will kill you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  DAYS PASSED, THE ice-wind broke, the fields shaded from white to green. It had been the best part of a week since Nona had run. Abbess Glass watched from her study window as she did every day. Her gaze settled on Novice Zole standing in the shadows by the base of the Dome of the Ancestor. “Come on, girl, what are you waiting for?” Glass spoke to an empty room. Zole should have made her move by now.

  Glass shook her head. She seemed to do more watching than Pelter’s watchers these days. It had been her first post in the Inquisition as a young woman: Shella Yammal, watcher. At first she had been tasked just to bring tales to the tower, whatever snippets of information passed across and around her father’s market stall. But Brother Devis, her handler, had seen the talent she had for the work and had made her a watcher, an official appointment, recorded in the great books.

  Zole stepped from the shadow now, intent on something. Glass followed her gaze. “Brother Pelter, Sister Rail, and Novice Joeli, a holy trinity.” The three emerged from Academia Tower, heads bowed in conversation.

  Three sharp knocks on the door behind her and Sister Apple came pushing through before the “come” was fully past Glass’s lips.

  “Mistress Shade?” Glass raised her eyebrows. Apple looked as if she had run all the way from the undercaves, hectic red blotches across both cheekbones.

  “Kettle’s gone!” Apple drew in a breath. “Something happened to Nona. Something bad.”

  “She went after Sherzal?”

  “What? No! I told you. She’s gone after Nona.”

  “I was asking if Nona had gone after Sherzal.” Glass glanced back out of the window. Everything still looked calm. It wouldn’t last.

  Apple blinked. “Nona? Why would she? And how could she imagine she could do anything to Sherzal?”

  Glass drew a slow breath, willing her impatience away. She couldn’t expect Apple to think clearly where Kettle was concerned. “What kind of trouble was Nona in?”

  Apple shook her head. “Kettle left a ciphered note. No details. She knew I wouldn’t let her go alone.”

  “Kettle is a Grey: she doesn’t require your permission, sister.” Glass smiled. “Besides, that girl is death on two legs. Worry for whoever gets in her way.”

  Apple looked down, frowning.

  “Additionally,” Glass said, “it’s probably safer for her out there. Sister Rock reports Inquisition guards and seekers approaching the Vinery Stair.”

  “Guards?” Apple met Glass’s gaze, her frown deepening. The seekers would be to hunt out Kettle—rumour had it she still haunted the convent, and rumour was bread and butter to the Inquisition. But the guards, that one clearly puzzled Apple. Why did the Inquisition need its shock troops for Sweet Mercy?

  “Think it through, dear.” Glass pulled out her chair and sat at her desk. There were papers that would need signing. She paused, arm extended for her quill. Apple’s intelligence had never been in doubt but the woman applied it too narrowly. “Imagine Pelter is making one of those poisons of yours. He selects his ingredients. He assembles them. He adds them, in the required order and in the required amounts. Not all at once. Some watchers first. Let things simmer. Some more. Stir. Wait. Then the next.”

  “But what’s he brewing?” Apple’s fingers moved as if imagining mixing ingredients of her own.

  “I told you,” Glass said. “Poison.”

  24

  IT TOOK LESS than two hours to reach White Lake. Back in the days when her mother first left to go there Nona had always imagined it as distant a place as the moon. “It’s too far,” her mother would say when Nona wanted to go. “Much too far.” In the end though she’d taken her curious child to a handful of meetings at the Hope church and likely Nona would have been confirmed in the light soon enough. But the juggler came and everything changed.

  For each mile Nona walked, her mind raced a thousand, back and forth over the same questions, the same hopes and fears. The people would have run from the village. Soldiers would have fired the buildings but it would mean mo
re if people ran to spread the news. To lift a hand against those in the scarlet and silver meant your home would burn.

  Her mother would have run. And she would have run this way, towards White Lake.

  During all the days that Nona had travelled to reach the village her mind had refused questions about her mother. The old hurt had scabbed over, been sealed beneath scar tissue, and Nona refused to pick at it, not until it was time. But now there might not ever be time and Nona’s questions queued for their turn on her tongue. Accusations too. But behind all that lay the oldest memories of safe arms, warmth, love without condition. Memories that Nona treasured, however indistinct they were. A taste of something that she still sought.

  The trail thickened into a track, the track into a road, and she came around the margins of the White Lake, watching the town on the far shore grow closer with each stride. Perhaps two hundred homes hugged the water, scores more stepping up the slopes behind. Quays reached out, questing fingers probing the lake’s secrets. A score of boats lay tied, half a dozen more heading in from the day’s fishing. Here and there a light burned in a window, the first of many that would rise as the night fell.

  Nona spotted the Hope church on the outskirts of town, a stone-built structure that should have carried a peaked roof but instead stood open to the sky. As she drew closer she spotted rooms adjoining the back, sheltering under tiles and timber. Presumably Preacher Mickel liked to sleep in a dry bed.

  The light had all but failed by the time Nona came to the church doors. They stood twice her height and were supported by scrolling iron hinges. It had always seemed odd to have doors on a place with no roof. Nona listened but heard nothing save distant cries from the quays, and laughter on the road, perhaps at the sight of a novice of the Ancestor knocking on the doors of Hope. She dismissed the thought. Few in White Lake would recognize her range-coat as part of the order, and surely not from the road. She had smeared dirt over the sign of the tree scorched into the leather across her back, and it would take close inspection to see it for what it was.

  She knocked. Nothing. Above her the sky was almost dark, ribbed by the red edges of clouds. Nona climbed the wall, using her blades only twice where the stonework offered no hold. She straddled the top and looked down into the church. A slate-flagged floor supported an altarstone at the centre; otherwise the place lay bare. At the services Nona had attended the altar had sported a strange globe of brass bands, something to do with pointing to the Hope when the skies were veiled.

  She eyed the door at the back. Must be where he lives.

  Keot made no reply. He’d kept silent since Nona spared Giljohn. Disgusted, she presumed. She felt him moving from time to time, sliding across her skin but going no deeper.

  Nona hung off the wall and dropped down into the church. The memory of incense haunted the place despite the wind moaning in through window slits. She straightened and approached the rear door. Before she reached it Preacher Mickel bustled out, carrying in both arms the brass device Nona remembered. He kicked the door shut on the warmth and light behind him and crossed half the distance to Nona before registering her presence and startling to a halt. The bands of the globe slipped from his fingers. On instinct Nona leapt forward and caught the device before it could hit the floor. She straightened and held it out to him. It was heavier than she thought it would be given it was mostly air enclosed by just half a dozen strips of metal bent into interlocking hoops.

  The preacher took his globe, his mouth working but no words emerging. Shock had replaced the fierceness Nona remembered. Mickel stood an inch or two taller than her. He was perhaps thirty years of age now, his dark hair still thick but receding in a widow’s peak. “I’m looking for Myra from Rellam Village.” It felt odd to give both her mother and the village a name. “She worshipped here.”

  “Who are you?” The preacher backed away to put the altarstone between them. “A demon?” He set the heavy globe before him.

  Nona puzzled for a moment then raised her fingers to her face. “No, just a normal person. A poison made my eyes dark. Do you know if Myra Grey survived? What happened . . . at the village? Sometimes she goes by Myra Reed.”

  The preacher narrowed dark eyes at her. “You didn’t move like a normal person. Hunska, are you? How did you get in?”

  “I climbed.”

  The preacher snorted his disbelief and opened his mouth before glancing around. Perhaps lacking any more believable explanation he stopped short of calling her a liar. “You’re looking for a woman?”

  “Myra from Rellam.”

  “Rellam?” The fear in his eyes when he had thought her a demon had now entirely made way for suspicion. “What interest would this Myra be to you?”

  “That’s my business.” If he didn’t recognize her then Nona had no desire to identify herself.

  The preacher touched the amulet hanging from his chain, a flat ring of grey metal, set with runes. “If this Myra worships here then she’s my business. The Hope’s business. What right do you have to ask questions here?”

  Nona’s temper lashed her tongue. “Right of blood. She’s my mother!” Subterfuge had always been a faint hope, marked as she was, and having shown her speed.

  “Ha!” Preacher Mickel drew himself to his full height. “Now the truth comes out! Don’t think I didn’t know you, Nona Reed, standing there in your nun’s coat with talk of blood-rights on your lips. The Ancestor-worshippers have schooled you well.” A sneer now as if remembering the child reduced the warrior before him. “When we humble ourselves before the Hope we join a greater family than any founded on seed and grunting in the dark.”

  “The Ancestor-worshippers taught me that the Hope is just a star like any other, only younger and still burning white. It’s not coming to Abeth. It won’t save us from the ice.” Nona flexed her fingers before her. “And they taught me how to beat a grown man to death with my bare hands if I need to. So, I’ll ask again, where’s my mother?”

  “She has given up her spirit to the Hope.” He said it with such poorly disguised satisfaction that Nona had to fight not to follow through with her threat. Had Keot seized his chance he might have tipped her into violence.

  “She’s dead?” Realization hit home and Nona’s anger blew out, leaving her hollow.

  The preacher’s eyes flickered towards the door to his chambers. “You should go, nun.”

  “She’s in there? You’ve got my mother in there?” The conviction seized her, the truth suddenly obvious, denial easy. Her mother couldn’t be dead: there was still too much unsaid between them. They could speak now, as adults, not separated by that gulf between a child’s ignorance and a grown-up’s sorrows. She started towards the door.

  “What? No! Of course not.”

  Nona was through the door before Mickel started after her.

  “Wait! That’s forbidden!”

  A corridor ran for twenty yards, three doors to the left, two to the right, and one at the far end. Nona glanced around, took the lantern from the wall, then ran for the second door on the left, which was heavier than the rest and bound with iron straps.

  “She’s not in there! Don’t be stupid!” Mickel came flapping through the church door after her. He sounded as though he were hiding something.

  Nona reached for her serenity so that she could pull the lock’s thread but waves of emotion pushed her back, a turbulence she couldn’t still. With the preacher closing on her she punched a flaw-blade into the heavy lock, once, twice, three times, then turned it. The ruined mechanism surrendered with a squeal and, shrugging off Mickel’s grasping fingers, she pushed through.

  The room beyond was a small one, windowless, with a broad shelf set at waist height running around three walls. An image of the Hope returned the lantern light, sparkling in a thousand pieces of glass, mirror, and crystal. Scores of objects covered the shelf, arranged with reverence rather than scattered.

  “I thought—” Nona let the preacher wrestle her back into the corridor. Her mother was dead.
Her denial had been stupid. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Mickel shoved her back against the wall. “You’ve defiled the Hope’s sanctum! And broken my door . . .”

  Images of Nona’s mother filled her mind. The hurt was worse than a wire-whip. She needed something, anything, to drive the memories out. Questions might help. “What is all that stuff?” Nona tried to see past the preacher’s shoulder.

  Pieces of the old world. Keot broke his silence.

  “Treasures.” The preacher tried to push her down the corridor towards the rear exit.

  “I saw black-skin . . .” Red Sisters made their armour from black-skin, the oily sheen of the stuff was unmistakable. Even the scrap among Mickel’s treasures would be worth more than the building. “And . . .” Nona didn’t have names for the rest of the things but some of them had the same grey glinting quality of old Gallabeth’s precious whetstone. “Ark-bone.”

  The preacher had her by the hood of her range-coat, pulling her to the back door. He lifted the bar and kicked it open. “They are parts of the ships that carried our tribes here across the black sea between the stars, and parts of the works they built here. When the Hope comes he will make them whole again just as he will bind flesh to bone and raise the dead from their graves to live once more.”

  He pushed Nona out into the blustery night. She put her foot against the door as he tried to haul it closed.

  “Where does it come from?”

  “It’s the gift of the Hope.” Mickel tugged the door again. Nona held it open. One more tug and Mickel relented, hanging his head. “The Sis build their homes over the best of what remains in the Corridor. The emperors themselves built their palace above the Ark and bind the Academy to them with its power. We pay explorers to hunt beneath the ice.”

  “My father—”

  “Your father sold my predecessor much of what we keep here.”

  Nona blinked and in her moment of surprise the preacher pulled the door free and slammed it between them.